Slow Train from Igatpuri (2 of 2) – India, Asia

I studied the crowd and saw a 4-year-old girl sit in a 14-year-old’s lap, who in turn sat in her grandmother’s lap. How does one get off the train? I wondered, looking around. The woman opposite reassured me: “Don’t worry, it will empty out at Kalyan – the next big station. These women take their goods to sell at the market there. They buy their vegetables in the small villages and then sell it in the town.” Right now they stared at me wide-eyed.

I was the alien, the foreigner. Though I was Indian, to them I smelt of the city and its money-mindedness, and all else that the Hindi movie industry had perpetrated about city girls: city girls wore tiny clothes that looked like underwear, danced in the streets and made eyes at the boys without a shred of coyness. I looked down at my long kurta and back at their navels showing through their nav-varis – the way saris are worn in the villages of Maharashtra, tucked around their legs and tight around the waist, emphasizing the curve of the bottom. Without a doubt their clothing was more “come hither” than mine, but of course, the wrinkled old woman, with the huge gold coin earrings pulling at her ears, wouldn’t agree with me.

She lived in a generation and a culture that, though geographically just 4 hours from Mumbai, is centuries apart in its thinking. Notice, I do not say “centuries behind“. These women have a set of values that will make the women’s lib movement look like something out of the Victorian age. They control home, hearth and family. They work hard for a living; you can see it in the thick calluses on their dark brown feet, in the shiny skin weathered by the noonday sun. They will not take a story from anyone, and would’ve cackled me out of the train that very moment if I made the slightest hint at them being the weaker sex. Which is why, I reasoned silently, the Ticket Collector hadn’t ventured in here. It was three hours since we’d left Igatpuri, and I knew that most of these people would not have bought a ticket – having to travel like that I didn’t see why they should have – but the Ticket Collector wasn’t in sight. My guess was, he probably decided to play safe and stay in the men’s compartment.

I noticed that even though their clothes were well worn, the women wore a lot of jewellery. Beautiful jewellery. In their nose, ears, hands and toes. And I realised that in their simple lives, even though jewellery did define their financial status, it did more to sketch their woman-ness. Ditto for the blood red, coin-shaped tikka on their foreheads, the symbol of marital status they wore with defiance. Like the ubiquitous mangalsutra. At the most basic, gold and black beads strung together with a hollow half-globe for a pendant, that they would only take off when widowed. But for all my intellectual reasoning, I thought, wearing all that jewellery could simply be their simple common-sense way of not having to pay for a bank vault or leaving it at home where it could be stolen.

The bhajans continued, and then right in the middle of a chorus that preached peace and harmony for all beings, a fight broke out between the downstairs neighbours. One was insistent that the other wouldn’t give her child space. They barked at each other for a while.

I listened to “May your mouth get blisters” and “May your all your food spoil,” and other such choice curses, with growing glee. Team Two continued shouting as they pulled out boxes of food – to energise them for another yelling session I guessed – and ate while they muttered. Right in the middle of those war-ridden moments one of my sandals dislodged itself, thanks to the rocking of the train, and decided to target the exact centre of a plate of snacks.

Five dozen eyes turned to look at me, and I felt myself shrivel to the size of a peanut. “Sorry,” I squeaked as someone – a good soul of course – handed me the vile object.

Suddenly, and in a show of amity, both factions turned on me. And in the next two minutes, as though I’d moved into a different movie, they were friends, exchanging snacks they’d packed for the journey. And of course, they continued to mutter at this rude stranger, me. The Peace Treaty lasted to the end of the journey, and I wasn’t sure if I should hide, or rejoice at bringing about communal harmony. Of course, like I said before there wasn’t a place to hide; even the space under the seats was taken. Filled with metal trunks, crates of mangoes, mattress rolls, a metal chair, a broken wooden tricycle and other things tied up so well in bundles I couldn’t even identify them by shape.

So I sat there while they looked at me, like some prime museum piece. The grandmothers were kind – they just kept singing through it all, mercifully drowning out the muttering.

Three hours ago I was sitting cross-legged in a large spacious hall in the quiet of the world, meditating. The Vipaasna Meditation Centre seemed like a dream now in the middle of this chaos. I smiled benignly and they probably wondered what I was so happy about. I think I’d tested my Vipaasna lesson in real life. All this was, as they say, “aniccha“: “changing,” “not constant.” And, as I shifted my aching butt, thank god for that.

The train chugged into a platform. Somebody announced the wrong station – the one after. Panic ensued, and the air was filled with hands and legs. Then somebody else called “No, it’s not Shahad yet!” Relief, brown leathery smiles – and pandemonium again. This time, to get back to their seats in a real-life musical chairs.

Then we were at Kalyan station, and the train belched out its passengers. People from upper berths climbed down in slow motion; I sat not believing the space. Soon they’d stretched themselves out and dozed, only to wake up in between and ask “Will you wake us up when we reach Dadar?” “Okay,” I said, trying hard not to let my own eyes shut. Then all at once around me I heard a soft snoring.

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